Balk crunched retail data and determined that Seattleites consume more espresso beverages than bottled water. Of course, they might be drinking their water from a faucet — we hope, anyway — but that’s difficult to quantify.

Balk writes:

Seattleites actually do prefer espresso to water — at least if you’re talking about bottled water. And here is the remarkable thing: out of the 96 metropolitan areas that I studied — from New York to Los Angeles, from Toledo to Tucson — there is only one place in the United States where more people drink espresso than bottled water. I’ll give you one guess.

Seattle, of course.

But there’s a caveat. Bottled water is pretty unpopular in Seattle, possibly for environmental reasons. Espresso on the other hand… well, we all know how Seattle feels about that.